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Hands of time

I was vacuuming earlier today and running through some ideas for my fourteen minute writing exercise, and it dawned on me — it’s been a long time since I’ve brainstormed! Lately, when doing household chores, I usually just fall into a vegetative state. So, let me tell you, this is very exciting!

I was talking to my son, who is also a writer, about my little project and we were kicking around some writing exercise ideas. He told me he likes to dig up digital media pictures, usually fantasy genre pics, and create a short story or poem from the image. He gave me an image to work with, which I will incorporate into my next exercise.

For today’s exercise, I did something a little different. When I wrote my book “Pretty Pretty”, I got this one line stuck in my head — “…pretty…so pretty.” It was from that line that I built the entire story. That line dogged me and banged around in my head for weeks before I finally sat down and worked on an outline.

This time, the line — “hands of time cut deeply into her skin…” — popped into my head. I really wanted to spend 14 minutes with the digital media pic, working on imagery writing skills, but that crazy line wasn’t going away.

When I let my mind run with that line, I got this mental picture of an older woman staring sadly out a window. I searched online, looking for an image of my lady and I found it:

Hands of time cut deeply into her skin.Knowledge burns brightly in ancient eyes, yet does not disguise the sadness that dwells there.
Yearning for days long gone, of a simpler time, of beauty, of youth.
Years pass so quickly — where did they go?
Once, surrounded by love and friendship; now only aching loneliness remains.
When did it begin that waking to the dawn no longer brings joy?
Memories, once so perfectly clear, falter and fade.
Her body, once strong and beautiful, now harbours frailty and pain.
The hands of time cut deeply…in more ways than we can imagine…
This was a great exercise! Next one: 16 minutes.